Contents like images and music have long been distributed by content distribution services over media such as television. Some of these content distribution services are chargeable; others are offered free of charge to subscribers, with advertisement information such as commercials inserted into contents so that advertising or sponsoring fees are obtained from commercial sponsors.
Such advertising or sponsoring fees either make up business income for content providers or cover their expenses for producing contents. The sponsors generally include diverse enterprises and business entities which offer on a chargeable basis household electrical appliances, industrial goods, and other products as well as varieties of services. Having advertisement information such as commercials inserted into contents helps draw more customers to the products and services marketed by commercial sponsors. The advertising campaign allows the sponsors to recoup benefits that will justify their expenditure on the advertisements. Although content subscribers enjoy distributed contents apparently free of charge, they may be regarded in fact as paying for the privilege by watching the advertisement information. The advertising businesses have already extended their operations throughout the broadcasting and publishing industries as well as in diverse content distribution services.
Under these circumstances, there exist certain linkages between subscribers, commercial sponsors, and content providers. That is, commercial sponsors get content providers to insert advertisement information prepared to attract subscribers' interest into contents. This promotes consumption of the advertised products and services, boosting the revenues of the commercial sponsors. The sponsors pay the advertising fees, expecting to derive further income and expansion of their business from the expenditure. With their earnings thus increased, the content providers expend more in producing better contents. This advertising business model works on the assumption that advertisement information inserted into contents is actually effective. In other words, attaching ineffective advertisement information to contents yields few benefits for the subscribers, commercial sponsors, or content providers.
Recent innovations and advances in data processing and telecommunication technologies have prompted a significant evolution of content distribution services. Traditionally, the so-called push-type content distribution services such as TV and radio broadcasting were the norm. Lately, by contrast, pull-type content distribution services such as those utilizing wide-area networks including the Internet are gradually gaining widespread acceptance.
Illustratively, over a TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) network like the Internet, there exist information-providing spaces exemplified by the WWW (World Wide Web). In such a setup, resource identification information in URL (Uniform Resource Locator) format is used to search through the information-filled space for gaining access to desired information resources described in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) format. Information resources of that type are viewed as home pages by the party called clients activating a WWW browser. In that setup, content providers superpose their advertisement information as “banner ads” on the home pages they run to gain advertising revenues.
Today, as network circuits such as telephone lines (asymmetric digital subscriber lines known as ADSL) and cable TV networks are getting faster in data transmission, the business prospects for image content distribution services handling moving pictures such as movies, animation films, and live broadcasts are brightening up.
One promising development is the so-called streaming technology that is starting to gain widespread use. The technology involves allowing a user to playback files even as they are being downloaded, not after completion of the download. Content distribution by streaming is considered to be the key to next-generation Internet usages. At present, well-known content distribution systems implementing the streaming technology include “RealSystem G2” and “Windows Media Technologies.”
These image content distribution services are also receptive to the advertising business model. That is, advertisement information is inserted into contents so that it may be distributed at a very low cost or free of charge to far more subscribers than in the case that the contents are chargeable. This can constitute a business that benefits three parties: subscribers, content providers, and commercial sponsors. As mentioned, however, the business presupposes that advertisement information attached to contents is significantly effective.
Pull-type content-providing businesses such as Internet-based content distribution services can personalize or customize advertisement information for each subscriber before inserting the information into contents for distribution to the subscribers.
Generally, advertisement information to be distributed is selected on the basis of individual subscribers' profiles, tastes and preferences so that the subscribers are better satisfied. However, pursuing the subscribers' requirements alone conflicts with commercial sponsors' desires to insert their advertisement information into those contents related to the products or services marketed or offered by the sponsors. Content providers, for their part, may wish to have the sponsors insert their advertisement information in accordance with the details of the offered contents and in keeping with the context of content distribution.
Illustratively, a content distribution system involving a content provider, sponsors, and subscribers may be organized in such a manner as to constitute a business model called the advertisement selecting business, wherein the three parties involved may have their requirements fulfilled in a manner maximizing the degree of satisfaction for the system as a whole.
Individual contents offered by the content provider retain their own attribute information together with requirements regarding the selection of advertisement information to be inserted into the contents in question. Individual pieces of advertisement information prepared by the sponsors hold their own attribute information along with requirements specifying which advertisement information is to be inserted selectively into what kind of contents. Individual subscribers also have their own attribute information supplemented by requirements about what kind of advertisement information they wish to watch selectively.
However, there has been few advertisement information offering services that would selectively offer advertisement information by taking into account the overall benefits of the three parties, i.e., subscribers, sponsors, and content providers.
Some conventional advertisement selecting systems are selectively designed to insert specific advertisement information into certain contents by taking into consideration the satisfaction of part or all of the content provider, commercial sponsors, and subscribers involved. However, if the calculated values of cost effectiveness are used as the sole criteria for selecting advertisement information to be exposed, only the first-ranked advertisement information, i.e., information deemed to be the most applicable to the subscriber, is repeatedly exposed; and the information ranked in second and subsequent places tends to be slow in getting exposed.
In such cases, the prepared inventory of advertisements is not effectively utilized. Indeed, most of the stored advertisement information is just hoarded up and remains idle. When the income picture is one-sided in favor of particular sponsors, other sponsors cannot get their advertisement information exposed in desired volumes. Subscribers, for their part, watch certain advertisements so frequently that they become tired of them. The effectiveness of advertisements as a whole thus dwindle down. In such advertisement personalizing services, the sponsors are billed for the advertising (sponsoring) fees reflecting the number of times their advertisement information has been exposed. With the lopsided exposure of advertisements they handle, the content providers collect fees only from specific (or limited) sponsors so that their advertising revenues are diminished correspondingly.
As a result, the content distribution services may let their viability and their functionality as advertising media be seriously compromised in the eyes of those they do business with.